Press Releases - Letter from the Desk of the USRA President

Letter from the Desk of the USRA President

Greetings, American racers. Welcome to Season 24! I am honored to return as President for a fourth season, something no other USRA President has done. I thank you for your trust in me and promise that I will continue to work with the community to make improvements where necessary.

With the start of the new season comes a change in our Nations Cup roster. Kendrick Simons aged out of junior competition at the end of last season. I thank him for his service and wish him well for the rest of his career. In his place, I would like to welcome Cordelll Gifford (no, the three "L"s are not a typo, at least not on my part) to the Nations Cup U21 ranks. Gifford has a full season of U21 competition ahead of him, and I look forward to seeing what he can do.

His manager may be familiar to some of you: TheGiff, as he is known, is not new to Nations Cup, previously managing the talented Mark Gifford, who put in eight seasons of solid effort on that front. Mark is certainly missing the driver's seat, and I'm sure he'd be more than happy to hop right back in (indeed, he did for a few Rookie Series races last season, even picking up a win). But as it is, he will have to settle for mentoring Cordelll, who appears to have learned quite a bit from Mark.

Looking forward to the season to come, one thing I hope to be able to do is reintroduce the USRA private series. I have a few hundred coins sitting here burning a hole in my pocket, so I'll be looking into that over the next couple of weeks.

On the real-life front, I'm proud to announce that I have, at age 30, enrolled in classes at a local community college, for the semester starting August 21. I will be going for an associate's degree in computer software development. I expect that the life of a college student will not interfere with my MRC participation, including my duties as President, but in the event it does, JasonMcSparron remains my general secretary and can take over if something should happen.

In closing, I wish everyone in the U.S. good luck for the upcoming season. Here's to large rating improvements, pole positions, victories and podiums, and maybe a few championships. Now go out there and kick some butt on the track!

Jonathan Goble
President, United States Racing Association